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MediaCityUK

Yasmin White is the latest MA Wildlife Documentary Production student to achieve success at a major international film festival. She follows in the footsteps of Shaz Syed, who was recently nominated for the ‘Best Emerging Science Filmmaker’ award at the Jackson Hole film festival and Tom Rowland, who won the award for ‘Best Cinematography’ for his film Adapting Anolis at the Screentest National Student Film awards earlier this year.

BA Journalism Broadcast graduate Fizah Tahir is in the running for the Mokhtar Awards, a film festival held in Paris, which celebrates films that are related to spirituality, Islam and Muslims. Voting is currently in progress in order to decide which ten films entered into the competition will make it into the final shortlist for the festival, which takes place from 26 – 28 December.

A total of 20 films will be chosen for the festival, 10 by the judging panel and 10 by public vote. These films will then compete for the chance to win prizes in various categories. As her film is a documentary, she stands to win €10,000 if her film is picked as a winner.read more

BA (Hons) TV and Radio students at the University of Salford based at MediaCityUK, had a special guest on their live show on Thursday – a 12ft albino Burmese Python named Casper.

The show, which aired live on Shock Radio, focussed on fears and phobia, and the highlight was an attempt to challenge BATAR student Mike Pickston, to face up to his fear of snakes by presenting some of the hour-long show with Casper draped around him. Also featured on the show was hypnotherapist Karin Momberg, who helped Mike through the experience.read more

On 29th October a fantastic new collaboration between the University of Salford and the BBC, called ‘Mock The Dock’, was launched.

The brainchild of Performance: Comedy Practices pathway leader Lisa Moore and the BBC’s Robin Cramp, with input from executive producer for BBC Comedy North Rebecca Papworth. ‘Mock The Dock’ is an ingenious new comedy platform (pardon the pun) that took place on a private tram travelling from MediaCityUK, through Manchester to its final destination of Piccadilly.read more

Third year Performance: Comedy Practices student Joshua Boland-Burrell got his first taste of the limelight when a comedy sketch he had written was aired on BBC Radio 4’s The Show What You Wrote.

His hilarious sketch entitled The End of the World was inspired by his experience of receiving endless cold calls from telephone and internet providers, and the notion that even after a nuclear fallout, these call centres would still probably exist. He originally developed the idea after seeing the brief for The Show What You Wrote on BBC Writers Room, however after suspecting that the sketch had not been selected, he continued to work on it when he began the Radio Comedy module in his second year of study. ‘The Radio Comedy module is a comedy writer’s dream,’ says Josh, “the first week is a crash course in sketch writing and the next five weeks are a mad dash to write, record sound effects, rehearse, record the show and edit it down to a 30 minute, all singing, all dancing segment.”read more

Joshua Tindall is a final year BA Journalism: Broadcast student who recently spent three weeks on a dream placement at Sky News. We asked Joshua to write a guest blog about his experience and here’s what he had to say:

My Placement at Sky News

Placements are a fantastic opportunity to learn new things to use in university and in your career once graduated. They can be competitive, as I found when I applied for a three week work placement at the internationally recognised news channel, Sky News.read more

Three BA (Hons) Animation students recently had their short film Growing Pains handpicked by computer games mogul Ian Livingston to be shown in the House of Commons as part of the Noise Festival; a celebration of up and coming filmmakers, writers, artists and musicians.

Patrick Bucknall, Tom Priest and Jake Love worked together on the short animation for their final project, which they showcased it at this year’s Create Salford festival. The film was seen by a representative of Noise who later contacted the trio to suggest that they submitted it for consideration.read more

Four BA (Hons) TV & Radio students recently took part in a live brief to create a promotional video for the engineering company Cofely (previously Balfour Beaty). The brief they were given was to encourage young people to consider careers in engineering.

Louise Page and Michael Wynne will join the already stellar cast of lecturers on the MA Creative Writing: Playwriting programme, which is now in its second year. The course is a unique collaboration between the University of Salford and three leading regional theatres: the Royal Exchange, Manchester; Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse; and the Octagon Theatre Bolton. Students learn ‘on site’ in the theatres, as well as at the University’s state-of-the-art MediaCityUK campus.read more

Shaz Syed, an MA Wildlife Documentary Production graduate has been shortlisted for the prestigious Jackson Hole Award in the ‘Best Emerging Science Filmmaker’ category for his film When the Peacocks Sing.

The documentary was filmed in Rajasthan in Northwest India and focuses on the country’s rich and dynamic landscape, which changes from dry and arid to green and fertile during the monsoon season, and the effects these changes have on the local wildlife – monkeys, tigers and of course, peacocks.read more